Caspian Tiger – March of Extinction

Caspian Tiger – March of Extinction Of the tiger subspecies, three became extinct during the 20th century: The Balinese Tiger (Panthera tigris balica, 1937), the Javanese Tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica, 1980s) and the Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata, 1970s). Of those three, the Caspian Tiger is for me the most fascinating. While the two first was the most Southern tiger subspecies, the Caspian Tiger (also known as Persian Tiger, Turanian Tiger and Hyrcanian Tiger) was the westernmost, being the subspecies that lived more close to Europe and even inhabiting some parts of the Old Continent. Notorious for his reddish coat, genetically speaking the Caspian Tiger is very close to the Siberian tiger, wich in the nowadays lives in the Russian Far East and in parts of Northeast China and in the Far North of North Korea. In the past, the Caspian Tiger lived in a area that encompassed from West to East from Eastern Turkey to Northwest China (province of Xinjiang1) and from north to South from the Upper Yeniseï to Northern Iraq, passing through Caucasus, the coastal area of Caspian Sea, Northern Iran, Northern Afghanistan, Former Soviet Central Asia and parts of Southern Siberia and Western Mongolia. And according to the Part 2 of the second volume of the book “Mammals of the Soviet Union”, of the soviet zoologist Vladimir Georgevich Heptner, those tigers in the Middle Ages inhabited places like the Azov Sea coast region, the Donbass and even Eastern Ukraine and Southeast Belarus, perhaps even reaching in his zenith Eastern Poland (to the East of Vistula River), Moldavia and Eastern Hungary (in that Hungary had under his control Transylvania, Transcarpathia2 and the actual Slovakia, as well Croatia, parts of Bosnia and the Vojvodina3 region in Northern Serbia. Those territories Hungary lost at the end of the First World War with the Treaty of Trianon in 1920). However, at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th, his range was already very reduced, to the point of in Caucasus being basically restricted to Southeast Azerbaijan and in places like southern Siberia and parts of Kazakhstan his presence being more eventual than fix, or even extinct from some areas that lived before. The present work pretends, above all, make a approximate chronological reconstitution of the march of extinction that the Caspian Tiger suffered from the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern 1 Read Sintzian, because in mandarin the particles x and j reads as s and tz, respectively. And when a word ends in consonant this is mute. 2 Region situated in the actual Southwest Ukraine, in the border with Hungary, Romenia and Slovakia. From the 10th Century to the 20th it was part of Hungary. Encompasses a great part of the actual oblast of Zakarpattia. 3 Read Voivodina, because in Hungarian, as well in other languages like the Polish, the German, the Dutch, Serbian, Croat, Slovak, the Baltic and Scandinavian languages and the Slovenian, the particle j reads as i. Age until culminate in final extinction in the second half of the 20th Century, as well make a reconstitution of the Caspian Tiger range in his zenith. According with the materials that i have, the Caspian Tiger was extinct of the regions that lived in the following dates: Ukraine, Donbass and Azov – According to Heptner, the kievan Velikiï Knyaz‟4 (cirílico russo великий князь) Vladimir II Monomakh was attacked not by a lion, a wolf or a leopard as proposed before, but by a tiger (called by the Kievan sovereign in his book Poucheniya Detyam/поучения детям as the fierce beast, or in Russian lyutyï zver‟/лютый зверь), while making a hunt in Chernigov during the years that ruled the principalities of Turov and Chernigov (1073 to 1094). According to the words of the Kievan Prince, the tiger jumped over his thighs and wounded him and his horse, but thanks to God his life was spared from death. Taking in account the geographic proximity with the Caucasus and the South Russian steppes, in Ukraine tigers inhabited most the eastern and Southern parts, were there are regions like Zaporozhie5, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov (the region of New Russia, or in Russian Novorossiya). And in the same way that the Siberian tigers in the northeast extremity of his domains crossed the frozen Strait of Tartary in the winters with certain frequency to make incursions in the north of the Sakhalin6 Island (and also taking in account that the Great Asian Felid is a good swimmer, to the point that in past be able to colonize islands like Sumatra, Java and Bali in Indonesia), very probably the Caspian tigers in northwest extremity of his range used the Strait of Kerch to make incursions and even colonize Crimea, coming from the Taman Peninsula to the east (as well further north the South Ukraine via Perekop Isthmus). That strait freezes in the winter, and the mongol general Subotaï and his troops used to reach Crimea in the curse of the campaign of 1222/1223 in the Russian steppes, which culminated in the Mongol victory over the Russian and Cumans in the Battle of the Kalka River (fought in the vicinities of the actual Mariupol). If the winter ice of the Strait of Kerch was strong enough to permit the passage of one detachment of one chivalry army (which in the minimum should have circa of 10 thousand warriors, yet taking in account that Jebe, the other mongol general that leaded the campaign, entered in the actual Ukrainian territory via Don River, with the two joining forces in the Prekop Isthmus), certainly for a tiger it was no problem that crossing. Probably the tiger became extinct in the lands to the north of the Black and Azov Seas between the last centuries of the Middle Ages and the first centuries of the Modern Ages (i.e. between the 14th to the 17th centuries). Volga-Ural (tartar Idel-Yaik) – In a footnote of the page 120 Heptner cites occurrences of tigers in the oblasti7 of Astrakhan and Orenburg in Russia and in Kazakhstan in the 4 In Russian Great Prince. Along with Knyaz/Князь (Prince), was one of the titles used by the medieval russians to refer to the sovereigns of the russian principalities which originated of the fragmentation of the Kievan Rus‟. While the title Tsar/царь was reserved to the byzantine emperors (whose capital, Constantinople, was called Tsargrad/Царьград, “the city of the Tsar”) and to the mongol-tartar khans of the Golden Horde. Only with Ivan IV the Terrible (r. 1547 – 1584) that the Russian Sovereigns, after the process of formation of the Russian State centered in the principality of Muscovy, started to use the title Tsar, until the last, Nicholas II (r. 1894 – 1917). 5 Read Zaporojie, because in russian, as well in the ukrainian and belorrusian, the particle zh read as j (Cyrillic ж). 6 Read Sarralina, because in russian, as well in languages like the mongol, arab, farsi, ukrainian and belorrusian, the particle kh reads in the same way was the particle h in the english and the particle j in the Spanish (Cyrillic х). 7 Russian and Ukrainian Cyrillic о бласть. Plural области. Administrative subdivision of some slavic countries and of the Former Soviet Union, including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan. Generally is translated as region and/or province. In Imperial Russia that term was used to reffer to the provinces of the periferical regions of the country, administrated by a chief which at the same time cuidava of the civil and actual provinces to the west of the Ural River (Aterau and West Kazakhstan), the river that divides Kazakhstan in a European part to the West and a Asian part to the east. In other words, those animals were also present in the lower curses of the Volga and Ural River and to the south of the Ural Mountains. However, is not mentioned when the tiger became extinct (or even only visited) those places. In the page 243 of the book of Uruch Beg (which later entered in the service of the Spanish Kings, converting to the Roman Catholicism and adopting the name of Don Juan of Spain) about his embassies in Europe between 1599 to 1602, is mentioned in the episode of his visit to Russia (which took place between 1599 and 1600) that the members of his expedition saw many tigers in the hills of the lower Volga (which in that time was under total Russian control), as well bears, lions (perhaps a lion population which managed to survive in that place until that time) and martens. It seems that the tiger survived in the lower Volga (Either as a fix habitant, either as a vagrant coming from the lands further South and East) and in the other areas of the northern coast of the Caspian Sea at least until the first half of the 17th century. But certainly in the turn of the 18th to the 19th century the tiger was already extinct in the reeds of the Northern Caspian. Western Transcaucasia (Georgia) and Western Russian Caucasus – In the early 18th Century, the tiger was still found in few numbers in the eastern coast of the Black Sea, in the regions of Adzharia and in the Kolkhid plains. Probably, they persisted in the Western Russian Caucasus until the 16th and 17th centuries. But in the first half of the 19th century they were already extinct from Western Georgia. In Eastern Georgia they were periodically seen until the early 20th century, with the last animal being killed in 1922 in the outskirts of Tbilisi, were they was seen before in 1820 and 1835.

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